Saturday Farmers’ Market Vendor Feature: Pureland Greenhouse

This week’s featured vendor is Pureland Greenhouse! After numerous prototypes, they developed and now sell still-alive microgreens that are around 20 to 40 times more nutritious than their mature plant versions. Their two current products, broccoli and radish microgreens, were chosen for their high nutrient content and are grown hydroponically from organic seeds. Head on over to Pureland Greenhouse this week and talk to Jim or Ivy to learn more about the health benefits and uses of these veggies, and don’t forget to bring the reusable container back when you pick some up! Read on for more information behind the business.

Ivy Cheng and Jim Mckeown

Can you give us an overview of your product?

We currently sell two types of products, our broccoli and radish microgreens, which are hydroponically grown from organic seeds. They’re very high in nutrients, about 20 – 40x more nutrient packed than the mature plant. Therefore you can consume less than you normally would need to. The University of Saskatchewan has done studies that show the benefits of glucoraphanin or sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts or microgreens in protecting against cancers and other oxidative and degenerative diseases and in significantly improving eyesight and diabetes.

How did Pureland Greenhouse start?

Ivy is the brains behind the whole system. She’s an electrical engineer who was intrigued about growing and finding things that were healthy to eat, especially in the winter. So, she started researching microgreens. With her electrical background and in collaboration with the University of Fraser Valley, she designed the lighting systems for a climate-controlled greenhouse where she ran tests. After everything was professionally tested by for cleanliness and nutrition, Pureland Greenhouse began. It took her two years before she opened her business where she scaled up to our current growing systems.

What’s unique about your product?

While there are other microgreen businesses, what’s unique about our product is that it’s still alive. The microgreens are grown with a little burlap base on the bottom, so when you buy them here at the market, they’re still alive! They will live, dormant and alive, in your fridge for at least a week, which is the beauty of it. They also will very slowly grow a little. You can choose to eat the microgreens by directly pulling them out or by cutting them out with scissors. Since they’re hydroponically grown, they don’t have any listeria or e-coli issues that soil-based plants have, so the seeds and the roots can be eaten as well.

In yellow, the nutrition information for the microgreens- compare for yourselves!

How do you eat the microgreens?

You can use our microgreens in smoothies and in all sorts of different snacks, like on crackers or in sandwiches. Personally, I like to add the broccoli microgreens into my smoothies in the morning – I take at least 50g a day and I just drink it. With the radish microgreens, which have a more spicy flavour, I like to put it in my salads instead of using lettuce. It’s just like a radish except it has a more powerful flavour. You can neutralize the flavour slightly by putting it into a sandwich or things like that as well.

Anything you want your customers to know?

This is a really unique product because our microgreens are still alive. An important thing is to make sure to browse the internet and do your own research on microgreens. We believe they have an important place in our diets in the future. In this urban area, we’re further from local farmers and there’s not much land around so being able to quickly grow microgreens in a small area is really great. We started Pureland Greenhouse because we wanted to provide more nutritious vegetables to the customer and promote a healthy lifestyle. With no plastic garbage (since the containers can be brought back), no GMOs, no long distance transportation and no harmful bacteria, we think this is amazing for our customers.

Is there any meaning behind the name Pureland Greenhouse?

Yes! I wanted no bacteria or dirt, and I wanted it to be pure. The ideal is pure seeds and no garbage, which is how I created this name back in 2015.

Where can you guys be found other than the UBC Farm Saturday Farmers’ Market?

People can come to our store in Burnaby near the Royal Oak skytrain station at 101-5777 Beresford Street. We also have an online shop where you can order online then come into the store to pick it up and see the operations directly!

Since our microgreens can be grown all-year round, we’re interested in delivering in the future. Keep an eye out because we’re also starting to go into some stores so our product will be available locally soon as well.